One embodiment relates to simulating of recoil for firearms. More specifically, one embodiment provides a method and apparatus for simulating the recoil of a selected conventional firearm. One embodiment additionally provides a laser to simulate the path of a bullet if the bullet had been fired from a firearm being simulated by the method and apparatus.
Firearms training for military personnel, law enforcement officers, and private citizens increasingly encompasses role playing and decision making in addition to marksmanship. Such training often includes competing against role players and/or responding to situations projected onto a screen in front of the trainee.
Although self-healing screens exist, permitting the use of conventional firearms for such training, the use of such a system requires a location appropriate to the use of conventional firearms. Furthermore, such systems are expensive and can be unreliable. Alternatives to conventional firearms have been developed. These alternatives include paintball, simunitions, and the use of a laser to show the path a bullet would have taken had one been fired.
Such alternatives, however, do not duplicate substantially all of the characteristics of firing an actual weapon with actual ammunition, and the current alternatives limit the extent to which the training will carry over to use of actual firearms. In various embodiments the characteristics of a conventional firearm to be duplicated can include size, weight, grip configuration, trigger reach, trigger pull weight, type of sights, level of accuracy, method of reloading, method of operation, location and operation of controls, and recoil.
Realistic recoil is the most difficult characteristic to duplicate. The inability to get a trainee accustomed to the recoil generated by a particular firearm is one of the greatest disadvantages in the use of various firearm training simulators. Recoil not only forces the firearm shooter to reacquire the sights after shooting, but also forces the shooter to adapt to a level of discomfort proportional to the energy of the particular bullet to be fired by the firearm. Recoil is significantly more difficult to control during full automatic fire than during semi-automatic fire, making the accurate simulation of both recoil and cyclic rate important in ensuring that simulation training carries over to the use of actual firearms.
While certain novel features of this invention shown and described below are pointed out in the annexed claims, the invention is not intended to be limited to the details specified, since a person of ordinary skill in the relevant art will understand that various omissions, modifications, substitutions and changes in the forms and details of the device illustrated and in its operation may be made without departing in any way from the spirit of the present invention. No feature of the invention is critical or essential unless it is expressly stated as being “critical” or “essential.”